Winners and Losers of Patch 7.17

Recent patches were considerably smaller, compared to the patches we got throughout the year, primarily focused on smoothing out the kinks in the fragile Dota balance. We can’t know for sure how it will impact the professional scene at the highest level, but the statistics from the pub games already tells a story of its own.

Biggest Winners of the patch

Two heroes stand out as the biggest winners of 7.17: Terrorblade and Broodmother. Terrorblade got a considerable buff to his agility gain per level: it was increased from 3.2 to 3.7. While the 0.5 increase might seem small on paper, it translates to one extra armor and 5 damage/AS at level 10 already. This makes quite a bit of difference in terms of farming speed and teamfight presence and shouldn’t be overlooked.

While the hero still wins less than 50% of his games in pubs, he is slowly returning to a playable state. Previous nerfs to regeneration, strength and some of his abilities have hit the hero a little bit harder than the balancing team expected, but it won’t be surprising to see more of Terrorblade at the International.

The Broodmother case is a lot more interesting: the hero received a 3.66% win rate bump after 7.17 and currently wins 50.66% of her pub games. It is interesting because the hero was untouched by 7.17—Broodmother did not receive any nerfs or buffs. Moreover, it is hard to say that any of her hard counters received any meaningful nerfs.

One of the most logical explanations for this trend is the three “bonus mango” days Broodmother got in 7.16, with an associated influx of players, who have little experience playing one of the more complicated heroes in the game. On each of these days her pick rate would double, with her win rate losing ~6% on average. Since the hero had no “bonus days” this patch yet, it is only natural that her win rate increased, relative to her performance in the previous patch.

Noteworthy improvements

Two other heroes definitely worth mentioning are Bristleback and Keeper of the Light. Both heroes received a ~1.3% win rate increase, courtesy of the buffs in 7.17.

Bristleback now has a base armor reduction from Viscous Nasal Goo, potentially making it a value point quite early: -3 armor during the laning stage is no joke, especially in dual lane meta. It makes the hero more aggressive and can enable some ganks, that would previously be too optimistic.

Keeper of the Light is better at sustaining his allies and himself, at least manawise. Once again, it makes him a better laner and while he doesn’t necessarily offer much consistency in terms of killing enemies, he can greatly enable his teammate to continuously dish out harassment, opening up possibilities for a kill.

Losers of the patch

Io was hit hard, at least in the pub environment. Losing 20% damage on his Spirits made the hero less of a threat and probably substantially reduced his gold and XP income. The hero lost more than 4% win rate and is currently only winning 41% of his pub games.

That said, these changes are very unlikely to translate into the pro scene, where the hero is not picked for his damage output. There are still many ways to abuse the hero, provided the players involved are capable enough. With Bristleback on the rise, we might even see a return of the once scary Chinese Io+Bristleback offlane duo.

Leshrac and Lycan were the other substantial losers of 7.17. These heroes lost more than 2% of their win rate and neither wins more than 50% of his pub games.

Both heroes received some direct nerfs in the patch, but it is surprising to see that Lycan lost more than 2% win rate from a 3%/2%/1%/0% decrease in the extra damage Feral Impulse provides. These 3% at level 1 of the ability generally translate to one or two extra damage—noticeable, but definitely not game-changing.

There is also Night Stalker, who was prematurely buried when the patch notes were released. In reality, the hero only lost 0.54% win rate and will remain a menace both in pubs and in the professional scene.

Night stalker will always be a problem whenever night times come. 1800 vision in the night, verastile as both offlane and roamer with many choice of item (midas and basher, armlet and echo, urn and tranquil, etc.), absurd 8 second silence and 4 second slow and since 7.06 he can fly now. There are ways to nerf this dude
1. Introduce "reverse night stalker". The one who can turn night into days. Phoenix already have that which is minor nerf since his bonus attack speed is gone which is important to break phoenix eggs. (Potential hero might be KotL by making his ulti active with aghanim scepter turning night into day with less duration but still useful)
2. Change how his ulti works since 40 second nightime is pretty absurd with 80 second cd. Even with heroes that benefits in night time gets countered due to vision reduction.
3. No matter how powerful NS is, his ability can be countered with a simple eul, lotus orb or guardian greaves. Although his passive only active in night, break can be good to protect some "wards" such as tombstone, nether ward, serpent ward etc. Unless NS himself build a nulifier or scythe of vyse, these are your best option and can be a good nerf.
Unless we want this dude to go back to void demon (5 second stun, 600 AoE degen aura, quake for slow and pushing and mass haste), night stalker still in need of a nerf

Edit : i forgot to mention manta style and bkb. Linken sphere only prevent one of those ability. The only way to beat NS is either outnumber him (PL, Brood, CK etc.) or outmanuver him (Tide, BS, Huskar, etc.) or if possible both (Meepo and Lycan is the prime example)

the game is all about laning right now. NS being bad at teamfights is balanced by the fact that he wins his lane so hard. If you're 4-5 levels and a few thousand gold ahead of enemy supports, your hero being a bad team fighter isn't going to matter as much during teamfights. Therefore the hero is still very strong.

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